Pirelli Motorsport Director Paul Hembery has said that the Sporting Regulations will need to be changed next year to allow the F1 tyre supplier to make modifications to the tyre specifications as the season goes along.

Currently the only way a change of tyre specification can be made is if all the teams agree to it. To change the sporting regulations to allow fine tuning of specifications will require a vote of the World Motor Sport Council later this year. Hembery described this as “one of a number” of things that will need to change next year to allow the tyre supplier to maintain control over the tyres during a long F1 season.

Had the rules allowed it this year Pirelli would have brought revised tyres with a kevlar belt construction to the Canadian Grand Prix – reacting to the problems with delamination in April and May – and the Silverstone fiasco would never have happened.

It’s likely that this will not please some of the teams, but after the dramas of this year, Pirelli feel it is the only sensible solution for a tyre company trying to supply tyres to a constantly evolving series,

“The decision making process has to change, ” said Hembery, referring to the sporting regulations. “There are a whole lot of things that have to change, like the testing.

‘It sounds terrible, but the best tyre test we have had in three years is the Mercedes test in Barcelona. Because we had hard cars, hard drivers working professionally, giving us exactly what we want. That has to change.

“The paranoia levels (among teams) are high because the competition levels are high. At a certain point that has to be let go to let us do our job properly.

“One of the factors of this season is that you get caught out,” added Hembery.

“No-one rings us up and says, ‘We’ve found a second a lap,’ you find out when you get there and that’s not what you want to do.

“In most of the series we have been involved in you make changes like that in consultation with the technical partner, which here is the FIA. The FIA and Pirelli don’t care who wins. So we are the only independent people who can do that. A unanimous decision (of teams) is never going to happen.”

Hembery was pleased that, after the dramas of Silverstone with five tyre failures, the race in Germany passed off without incident,

“There was a lot of media interest this weekend and we’re glad we could deliver a faultless race and a very exciting and enjoyable one,” he said.

“It’s fascinating, it was a battle of wills and strategies. Mercedes had a problem again at the end. That’s got to be a concern for them; they have huge outright speed but can’t seem to make it work (in the race), especially in the heat. Lotus in the heat were very strong. Red Bull were just very quick.”

Hembery said that the Silverstone Young Driver test will be a tyre test, running the 2012 construction with the 2013 medium and hard compounds. It will hurt Mercedes that they are not there, but they will get the same feedback information from Pirelli afterwards as the teams that take part.

The hard tyre will be essentially the same hard as last year, the medium, soft and supersoft are softer compounds than in 2012. The teams don’t feel that much will change in terms of competitiveness as they all know the 2012 construction very well. It will warm up more quickly than the 2012 tyres, as they come in at around 5 degrees lower than the steel belt tyres.

It’s likely that the harder tyres from the range will form the default tyres in the final part of the season, as last year.

That seems to contradict the FIA who are saying tyre data must remain in the possession of Pirelli and not be communicated to the test team, and as the YDT is now a tyre test no team should get any of the data.

How can it be a secret if the data was shared. The two are mutually exclusive. You can’t be given data for a test and then claim to not know that the test happened. The story that leaked to the press was that Nico Rosberg told Vettel whilst the two were having a meal together, and that was the first that Red Bull knew about the test. If everyone was given the same debrief data, presumably including Mercedes in that, then how could anyone claim that it was kept secret?

Now that team drivers are participating this Mercedes YDT exclusion punishment is finally right and fair.

It’s a little funny that after what most of us felt was a light punishment, events unfolded that amplified the punshiment to the appropriate level. Ironic too that it was the very punishment Mercedes asked for.

Do we really want Perreli to hold so much power though? We’ve seen that aerodynamics are second to tyres when it comes to performance, so hypothetically a politically motivated Perreli could control the show by making compound changes depending on who’s winning.

But that would assume that Pirelli KNOW exactly what is working on the cars and how to change the tyres to impact specific teams – it’s clear they don’t know what destroys their tyres, as they’ve said, there are too many variables. And if Pirelli knew exactly what to do to make the tyres work perfectly, their engineers would all have been poached by the teams anyway.

It is a worry, but luckily Pirelli aren’t any better at predicting exactly what car design will suit their tyres in all conditions so if they did try to sabotage one particular team, it could backfire and end up helping that team.

If they really wanted to alter the championship anyway they could easily supply more puncture prone tyres to individual teams right now. No need for complex and expensive compound changes.

So I think we’re safe from Pirelli having the power to consciously detract from one team (as further evidence, if they have been trying to ‘slow’ Red Bull down, they are doing a poor job as Vettel is doing better than he did last year when they weren’t complaining about the tyres anywhere near as much…)

of course pirelli can manipulate the tyre choices. they bhave all the data to enable that to occur. through their embedded technicians in each team they would also be privy to set up parameters.

i would remind you of what has been the most telling quote in this entire saga, hembery stated, when questioned about the trash compounds being introduced, ‘do you want red bull to run away with the title again this year’. if ever you needed evidence to support the pirelli machinations it is there in his statement.

despite this, redbull have done exceptionally well, which must rankle with those who sought to slow them down by using a third party as the trojan.

Yeah I see that problem as well. They should find a compromise between performance and control. But if the tire supplier doesn’t get a certain amount of freedom to develop, we’ll end up like in 2010 when Bridgestone went the safe route and brought tires that lasted for 50 laps. Do you want to go back to boring races?

Something they’ve never done in any series they’ve previously, or currently, contested so why would they start now?

I’m pretty certain that if the FIA thought that that would be the case then they’d give the tyre contract to Michelin here and now, Pirelli in particular are very much aware that they don’t need the bad press of race fixing.

It should also be noted that when there control tyre contract for the WRC came to an end and Michelin took over, all the teams complained that Michelin’s tyres weren’t as good as Pirelli’s had been.

If Pirelli produce durable tyres from the beginning, then there’ll be no need for mid-season changes to remedy tyre wretchedness. Perhaps, even with sham after sham, lessons have still not been fully learnt.

Safety must be the only reason to change tyres mid-season, not any 3rd parties whim.

Talking about political motivation, Paul Hembery repeatedly gave his excuse for refusing to stiffen the tyres as that Red Bull would run away with the championship.

I might be far from a Red Bull fan, but I really despise anyone tossing logs in the path of a team. If Red Bull are the fastest, then they deserve to win it. Same goes for any other team. It isn’t Pirelli’s place to slow anyone down.

100% agree. The sport changing the rules to disadvantage dominant teams has always made me uncomfortable. Anyone remember the season when they made Schumacher one lap qualify first on every green track? He used to say “they call me the street sweeper around here.”

yes quade, i too have been reminding people of this ‘hembery’ statement but most of them choose to ignore it.

i would like to repeat my take on this, no third party supplier should have the ability to influence the outcome of an F1 race, because this is what is actually happening and they are, can you believe it, getting a huge sympathy vote.

Im not one thats against change but it seems to me that Pirelli are wanting more control in the sport and I cannot agree that’s a good thing for F1.

It has already been sanctioned that we will have more winter testing and the possibility of testing throughout 2014. What I don’t agree with is a tyre manufacturer- even with all its good intentions can decide that it needs to change the compounds or improve them over and above the teams approval- it seems to me the pendalum is swinging the other way now.

Im sure the events of this year have highlighted the need for more sensible testing earlier on. Also the new drivetrain formula next year. But what I don’t want to see is both the FIA and Pirelli saying half way through 2014-” oh these tyres are not good enough- lets change it” . The teams don’t go spending countless millions setting up cars for certain tyres only to have someone change it. I agree as all the teams currently agree that on safety grounds – the tyre can now make alterations In consultation with the FIA – But only on safety grounds.

Quite frankly I would love to see tyre competition and another supplier with the same strict controls. I just get the feeling that everytime one person or entity has too much say on how F1 operates – the sport suffers. To me this a strong way for Pirelli to strengthen its brand and have a greater say in how it promotes itself more than being a “supplier”. First they were down trodden and now they are throwing themselves on the mantle piece .

Do you like the racing when it rains? Of course you do, everyone does because it is exciting and unpredictable. But when it rains the racing is also far from “flat-out” compared to the dry, and the outcome can often be a “lottery”. Do you see my point?

Sure.. a wet race once or twice a year can be spicy, but that’s completely different to the current farce which makes a mockery of the Championship, when racers are unable to race, and there’s zero consistency in any Teams’ performance, except with Red Bull’s.

That is a contradictory statement. Because Red Bull is consistent, there IS consistency. And Red Bull’s consistency began before the current tires existed. So there is also consistency through more than one generation of tires, and in fact through more than one manufacturer of tires (fact: Red Bull won their first championship on Bridgestones).

In other words, Red Bull has been the best for the past four seasons and the other teams can’t keep up regardless of WHICH tires they use. How is that a mockery of anything but the teams’ failures to adapt to regulation changes in order to compete with Red Bull?

If no Team other than RBR can understand the tyres, then it is a joke….something’s not right. All that expertise and technology and no other Team can do a successful job….

The bottom-line is that we lose-out because we don’t get good, consistent races. It’s all variable race-to-race, which just makes it laughable. Racers can’t race on a consistent basis. Sorry driver, the sun’s come out – you can only drive at 75% today. I blame the FIA and Pirelli, not the teams who have failed to do a Red Bull.

So, pathetic eh… every race is a lottery… some might like that – but I certainly don’t. F1 shouldn’t be a random race, nor should it be an endurance, tyre preservation race. If the Le Mans participants can race FLAT OUT for 24 hours, with the drivers giving the max, and able to push the cars to the limits, then why can’t F1 do this for a mere 1.5 to 2 hours?

First let me be 100% clear: I am not a Red Bull fan, a Pirelli fan or am particularly aligned with any other team or organization. I am a Formula 1 fan first and as such I want to see the best series have the best cars, the best drivers and the best racing.

Now on to your statement regarding consistency. Yes, you qualified it by saying “except with Red Bull’s”.

Now unless you are somehow suggesting Red Bull is an exception to the rules or is otherwise secretly circumventing the rules, saying there is no consistency in F1 but one team is a meaningless statement.

I understand your concern that the tires are dictating how the racing is going. But my point is valid and timeless: in F1 it’s always SOMETHING that makes one team dominate.

One need only look back through F1 history to see this is true, such as when McLaren dominated in the 80′s, Williams in the 90′s, or Brawn in 2009 (aided by their double diffuser).

If every race was a lottery and we had Red Bull winning one weekend but then Marussia winning the next then that WOULD truly be a lottery. But that really isn’t the case, is it? So I suggest putting aside the histrionics and appreciate what is happening as just another phase of the infinitely changing beast that is F1.

Pirelli need to have some fixed points to work with – and ones the teams cannot argue with.

Maybe they should be allowed to test say 3 times a year. They could use the driver and his car that is, at the time of the test, 10th in the championship. That would mean a current car and a reasonably good driver. Whatever was done in the test should not be enough to make a significant change to either championship.

I don’t envy Pirelli next year as they will have no properly representative testing until the 2014 cars arrive at the first test. With such significant changes to the cars we could all be in for some big shocks – in all manner of ways.

Car weight will vary less during a race, they will have the potential for more torque and, with higher capacity energy recovery the front/rear brake balance could be far more extreme. We will have no idea what this will mean for using ERS power until that first test.

Just want clarification for next years rubber, will they be a stronger construction. As the rear tyres can not do wheel spin and I feel next years cars may create wheel spin, which will increase degradation.

I hope the Pirelli tyres next year become like 2009 / 2010 Bridgestone style and nothing like this years fiasco.

One question I have about tire testing for next year …. will the cars be so different that testing with anything other than a 2014 car will be useless in compiling tire data? Will the idea of using a 1 or 2 year old car still be viable, or will it be 2014 or nothing?

Wheelspin is not the only cause tyre heat from acceleration. The tyres are still distorting when the cars are accelerating and this distortion of the sidewalls leads additional heat generation. The amount of wheelspin is in the control of the driver as to how much throttle is used. Next year they will use less in general out of corners and the velocity where the car weight and aerodynamically generated friction force exceeds the amount of torque the engine can provide will be a fair bit greater – probably about 40%.

Braking loads are pretty evenly split in F1 cars due to the downforce not being transferred to the front tyres and the very low centre of gravity, so the rear tyres get around 48 brake bias.

The simplest way to handle the increased acceleration loads is to make the tyres wider. This widens and shortens the contact patch of the tyre which in turn reduces the distortion of the tyre as it rolls. Reduced distortion reduces the heat build up.

The peak forces that the tyres will have to withstand come from the tyre compound and the aerodynamic loads. If these increase then Pirelli will need to strengthen the construction. The acceleration forces are not the largest forces the tyres experience so any construction changes would be driven by other factors such as revised dimensions, any changes to the shape of the shoulder, etc.

In general, more engine power leads to more downforce as the engine power can overcome the drag penalty. There are varying views as to how much power next year’s cars will have, but it is generally thought to be less. The greatly increased torque could lead to the cars running more downforce to aid traction at the expense of top speed. This would really just result in Monaco-level downforce being run in more places, so it shouldn’t influence the tyre constuction too much.

I feel that wheel spin would be a issues in next years car like James was explaining due to the higher torque generated. I totally agree with your comments and was concerned about 2014 tyres.
I take your point on wider tyres just like in the previous turbo days?

FIA Should propose a tyre war, bring in various tyre suppliers: Goodyear, Bridgestone, Dunlops etc, create a better spectacle. Or even better make the tyres durable, heavy fuel loads will create the effects on the first stint just like in 2010. 2010 Was a epic year, it brought close racing 4 drivers could have won that championship.

Personally as things have changed somewhat I think Mercedes ought to be allowed to attend the next Pirelli tyres session (Young driver test!!!!) in July, because it will be grossly unfair to them if they are not. The problem with the concept of high deg. tyres is that it is grossly unfair, and the whole thing becomes a contest within a contest. There has not been a fair race since their introduction as starting from where they do F1 cars will invariably be different, and could not possibly be identical which is what they would have to be to be fair. It does not matter how intrinsically good the driver or the car is, as if it does not run the tyres in a specific way in any given environment then you’re going backwards. F1 has not been about proper racing for some time, it is merely a tyre strategy and conservation exercise. Given the aforemention the races are not races at all in the F1 tradition. Sebastion Vettel no doubt a very good driver, but he has had a very easy four years given the competency of the Red Bull design team. So my contention is that it is not a level playing field and could not possibly be.

Why do they always look like they have NO IDEA what they are doing?
Why are they talking????
Just build the tires,Bring them to the track and shut up.
If the fia dont like them,then they can ban them from providing tires.
Otherwise the fia can shut up.
If the tires dont blow up….And the teams dont like the tires(merc)Quit formula 1 and Shut up.
The theme here is Shut up.Use the tires or not,Provide the tires or not,just do it.Stop whining about it.
The end.

Given the current situation I think we need another tyre supplier that will supply durable tyres to those that want them. – I think Pirelli would suddenly find that they had a lot of unsold tyres on their hands. What is the point in having a race if some cars are unable to do just that. Oh! I forgot it’s about improving the spectacle for TV as most of the pundits are so dim they don’t know the difference.

i simply can’t believe the ongoing pirelli saga. i have just read an article by hembery where he stated that ‘they were going to go aggressive in hungary’ with their choice of tyres!!!

the fact that hembery has control of what tyres are made available is just amazing. he is in fact determining the most likely outcome of any given race owing to the fact that some teams are better on some tyres than others. this is totally farcical. that one person, providing a third party product has such influence makes a total mockery of what was once a great sport.

there should simply be three tyres [soft, medium and hard] available for the teams to choose from and they must be the same for the entire season. pirelli should just supply the tyres and have absolutely no further involvement in structuring the races.

surely james you would have an opinion on this. could you perhaps come back with a critique from your own perspective.

yes james, that is fine in principle but does not take pirelli out of the frame. if they reduced the number of compounds to two then that would not entail any different logistics. so maybe just supply a ‘hard and a soft’.

it is a constant source of irritation not only to me but, i should think, the majority of F1 followers that the tyres have become the single biggest factor in determining race outcomes. the ruling ‘cabal’ have IMO messed up big time and have allowed a tyre manufacturer to influence what is an exceptional incubator of superb hi technology!

when the genius of the ‘newey breed’ of engineers provide solutions with vast sums of investment money see their efforts disappear down the toilet because of a tyre choice made by an abitrary outsider i think it is about time to call a halt to this tyre madness.

tyres, as a subject will not go away unfortunately and IMO the issue will ramp up again and continue to dominate now that the hungary changes are about to be delivered.

Pirelli are 100% right to INSIST upon this. The teams and the FIA have already shown that IF there are issues with next year’s tires that the teams will NEVER be able to agree as to whether a change of tyre is allowable. ANY change will always hurt whatever team is performing well on the current tyre – so no changes will be approved as per the regulations insisting upon a unanimous decision.

So of all of the players, ONLY PIRELLI seems to have the neutrality to make the call to insist upon a change in tyres during the season if safety demands it. The rest of the involved parties have too big a stake in the outcome, except the FIA, which is too weak it would appear.

Without a clear “Out Clause” to allow them to change the tyres if needed, Pirelli will have no choice but to over-engineer the tyres and give us unbreakable and processional tyres. And I for one am old enough to remember THOSE snooze-fests…and will be tuning in other entertainment after the first 5 laps…

robert, i too am old enough to remember the ‘processions’ but they weren’t entirely down to the tyres. the reason behind those processions was mainly due to the ‘aero’ configurations. you surely must recall all the solutions that they tried, ‘downwash’ rear wings, adjustable front wing elements’ etc etc etc.

in those days cars were able to pass by slipstreaming…sometimes but the major limiting factor was aero not the tyres.

No, I agree – BUT THE AERO HAS NOT REALLY CHANGED AT ALL!!! And it CAN’T. Take away aero and all of a sudden F1 cars would be no faster than F2 or even F3 cars around the same track.

I’ve written on this over and over – take away the degrading tyres, and you are left with only DRS/KERS to hope to solve the passing problems that aero has created. And DRS does not work equally well on all tracks. So without the enforced strategy and pitstops from 2 to 3 tyre stops, you WILL have some tracks that are processional – maybe a quarter of them, maybe half. Gah.

If that is what F1 offers up, a lot of viewers will begin to find “Extreme Fishing” more attractive to watch…

there is absolutely no need to shout. are you seriously saying that aero hasn’t changed in 20/25years? of course it has. DRS and KERS are extremely artificial, but perfectly suitable if you are the type of F1 follower who craves artificiality.

if some tracks are, for whatever reason ‘ processional’, then so be it.better that than this ridiculous trash tyre situation that we are having forced upon us.

you seem to have omitted the main reason behind all of this which precedes pirelli involvement. the introduction of R & R that turn F1 into a quasi spec series seems to be the real reason why there are some racing problems. you should read adrian newey’s take on this to understand where F1 is headed. 2014 R & R’s are even more prescriptive in many ways.

i happen to prefer my racing on the track, not in the pits which is the direct result of pirelli et al introducing these appalling restrictions.

if you bothered to investigate you would’ve found that some time ago there were moves afoot to restrict a lot of the current aero devices in favour of re defined ‘underfloor’ aero tunnels that would have delivered tremendous downforce without the ‘aero wash’ problems that have been created. this was apparently vetoed by the teams due to the costs involved, not because it wouldn’t have worked.

however, each to his own. it is just that i personally believe that ‘trash tyres’ are not the answer. tyres that restrict drivers actually racing may be fine for you but not for me.

the only reason there appears to be a safety problem is that pirelli, again, changed the tyre compounds/construction for 2013. why?

they messed it all up and came a cropper as the tyres failed. none of the current problems would’ve arisen if they, pirelli, had stayed with the ’12 tyres. that is why they are reverting now to that spec albeit with ’13 compounds.

no matter how you spin it, these problems lie with pirelli and others trying to manipulate results via the back door.

I think the last thing F1 needs is to give Pirelli freedom to “make it up as they go along”. It simply is not true that they or the FIA have no interest in who is winning, as proven by Paul Hembery’s statements in this very article; they want exciting racing, which clearly means keeping the championship open as long as possible.

There need to be very clear rules on what Pirelli can and cannot do. Changing tyres mid-season for anything other than safety reasons should not be possible, if Pirelli and the FIA don’t want to be accused of favouritism and fixing (regardless of whether or not the accusation is justified).

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